


Midnight's Favour

by lost_spook



Category: Midnight Is a Place - Joan Aiken, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase Sequence - Joan Aiken
Genre: 500 prompts, Found Family, Gen, Post-Book(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 15:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Midnight brings sunshine as well as sorrow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight's Favour

**Author's Note:**

> For in the [500 Prompts Meme](http://lost-spook.livejournal.com/300554.html) (Prompt #274 By midnight’s Favor).
> 
> Coda for the book - mild spoilers.

The sunshine altered everything, as Midnight Park ceased to look grey and bleak and instead glowed green and gold under the blue skies of one of Blastburn’s rare days of summer. The trees were no longer stark and leafless; they seemed almost to be dancing in the wind to unheard music of their own. And away in the valley below, even Blastburn didn’t look quite as black and grimy as usual.

Lucas Bell, crouched amid the burnt out ruins of Midnight Court, glanced up and around him again and wondered at the change. It was hard to remember that this was the same place where only a year before he had been so very lonely and unhappy, caged up inside this vast, gloomy old house. He felt glad that it was no more.

“Well?” asked Mr Oakapple, walking over to join him. “What is it you’ve found?” Unlike Lucas, the tutor looked uncomfortable at being in the ruins of the house. He might be wondering if it was unsafe, Lucas supposed, or perhaps it wasn’t the same for him, when he’d known it as it had been before Sir Randolph had stolen it. 

Lucas pushed his hair out of his face, leaving a smudge of earth across his forehead. “I’m not sure, sir. It’s iron, I think, but it can hardly be something valuable, or someone else would have taken it.”

“Yes.” Mr Oakapple gave a small smile of acknowledgement. “In any case, I don’t believe Sir Randolph had anything of value left in the house.”

As Lucas finally began to pull the object loose, the third member of their party came hurrying over, avoiding the fallen stones. 

“Luc!” she said breathlessly, as she arrived beside him. “I hid and I waited – and I waited – but you did not come!”

Lucas looked up at her. “Sorry. I tripped over something and I couldn’t see what it was, so I was trying to find out. I forgot.”

Anna-Marie gave a snort that expressed her disgust at the idea that she could be forgotten and stamped her foot. “What is it, then, that you have found? It cannot be anything of great interest, I think.”

“I’ve got it,” said Lucas, ignoring her moment of temper. It was easy to forget sometimes how young Anna-Marie still was. She was so very determined and pragmatic, and such a fiercely real person in her own right.

Anna-Marie hunched down beside him and informed him with disapproval that he had managed to get mud on his face and on his best jacket. Lucas took no notice, and finally pulled out what proved to be a bunch of keys on an iron ring.

“Is that all?” Mr Oakapple laughed briefly. “They must be the housekeeper’s spare set. I suppose this would have been the kitchen area.”

Anna-Marie stared at what Lucas was holding and then collapsed into helpless giggles while the other two watched in bemusement, until she continued for so long that they had to laugh themselves.

Eventually, she sat up and wiped her eyes and said, by way of explanation, “But, see! So many keys but there are no doors left to open, not one. _Moi, je pense que c’est très drôle._ ”

“May I keep them?” Lucas looked to Mr Oakapple.

Mr Oakapple smiled down as Anna-Marie took his hand and swung on it. Just for a moment, the tutor had that odd expression on his face; Lucas knew now that it was somehow due to her resemblance to Denzil. “If they belong to anyone, it is Anna-Marie. You should ask her.”

Lucas, tried not to pull a rude face at having to ask her for permission, and tightened his hold on the keys. “May I, then?”

“But of course!” Anna-Marie said, wrinkling her nose. “I do not want them. I do not see why you do, Lucas.”

Since he’d already dirtied his jacket, Lucas saw no harm in using the end of it to brush some more dirt from the bunch of keys. He shrugged, and didn’t answer Anna-Marie. He didn’t know why he wanted to keep them, but he thought perhaps he could invent stories about them. They were all different shapes and sizes and it was easy to forget their prosaic origin. He told himself that one opened a secret room in a castle; another belonged to an old chest that had lain closed for over a century in the attics, and hid a deep, dark secret…

“Luc?” said Anna-Marie.

He shook himself and hurried on to join them; they’d walked on ahead while he was standing here dreaming. He took Anna-Marie’s other hand as the three of them walked back across the Park to the ice-house, where Lady Murgatroyd would be waiting. “Only thinking of a story – about one of the keys. When it’s ready, I’ll tell it to you.”

“If I want to hear it,” she said, with a touch of old imperious manner. “I think first you should write about us, or Grandmère’s tuning fork –”

“I’ll tell those, too,” Lucas promised, and then won her over by starting to relate the adventures of a girl who had found a small silver key – the key to a cage that had trapped a fairy. 

Anna-Marie listened closely, though she frowned and argued again with him that there were no such things as fairies and hopefully suggested that perhaps he had been mistaken and the cage held a bird, like her canary.

“No,” said Lucas. “This fairy was real and extremely troublesome. Luckily, the girl was very clever, but if you don’t want to hear how she tricked it –”

Anna-Marie gave in with a good grace, while Mr Oakapple gave them both an amused look, and they walked along in the sunshine, heading back home. Lucas paused in his story to feel surprised again at where a year had brought him. He couldn’t be lonely living with the other two, with Lady Murgatroyd, and baby Betsy – not to mention the dog, the cat and the canary. And that was as much because of Midnight and Denzil and Sir Randolph as his being sent here had been. It was a strange thought, but he was glad as well as sorry now. He thought the other two would probably agree with him if he asked, despite what had been lost.

“Luc, Luc,” said Anna-Marie, tugging at his hand and breaking into his thoughts, “the story!”


End file.
